Still feels like a parody of some sort. Let me know if I’m not getting it.
At a larger level, it makes understanding whats happening really difficult. Its hard to tell who is actually corrupt and who is "peacocking" corruption.
Now here we are years later and there are “app voting irregularities” from the people that swore up and down Russia was hacking our elections, you think those people would be more cautious if they actually believed those claims themselves.
Thinking about it some more, I guess this is probably a “attribute to incompetence, not malice” situation, but as amusing as I found it, really was just made for the conspiracy theorist!
State Democratic parties are cheap and obstinate. Most of the money is siphoned off by salaries and contractors. They don't work together nor work with the national party. When the deign to do so it is because their offered a lot of funding or favors.
I thought it was satire the first time I heard as well. Voting software from a company called Shadow inc. is just such bad optics. Nobody there thought to at least spin off a company called "Open Digital Democracy Services Inc.", open source the thing and maybe get some external entity to take a look at it?
This reminds me a bit about putting funny messages in logs which are emitted during catastrophic events. It might seem cute at the moment, but when shit hits the fan and the customer calls and quotes those lines back at you over the phone it is just so embarrassing.
Fails the acronym test. ODDS or ODDSInc (pronounced like odd-sink).
Still much better than Shadow though. I'd probably have just gone with something like "Crier", "Political Systems Awareness", or even "Total Internal Communications and iNfrastructure Services.
Crier is harmless because all you're doing is shouting the results from the rooftops to anyone who'll listen.
Everybody can respect a metrics communication implemented by that PSA company.
A little contrived and maybe a bit dated imagery-wise, but an IT company that's whose name degenerates to TIN-CANS (with a string in the middle of course) is refreshingly on the nose, and most importantly, way more appropriate than Shadow.
Naming is an art best approached with at least some level of care. Not trying to legitimize most marketing-wank, but you do prime the discourse through your decision with regards to what you call yourself.